NORTH WILDWOOD — Gov. Chris Christie today classified his veto of a bill that would have banned one of the most powerful weapons available to civilians as old news.

"Again, I've said everything I'm going to say on these topics that are now a week old in the veto message that I gave," Christie said during a news conference.

He issued vetoes on the gun bills after 6 p.m. on a Friday, a tactic politicians have long employed to avoid news coverage of controversial issues. And since releasing the vetoes on Aug. 16, Christie has refused to answer reporters' questions about his thinking on the measures.

"The bill was over broad and I felt like the Legislature was playing politics," Christie said today. "They knew intentionally what I had proposed and what I was willing to sign and they decided to make a political statement so if they're going to make a political statement then they're going to get a veto in return."

The Republican governor called for a ban on future purchases of the Barrett .50 caliber rifle, but the Democrat-controlled Legislature sent him a bill that would have completely banned the rifle and forced owners to give them up.

Instead of issuing a conditional veto altering the narrowly tailored law to more closely resemble his initial proposal — a common tactic Christie employs on all sorts of bills — he vetoed the bill outright. The move convinced some critics that Christie is making policy to appeal to 2016 presidential primary voters and not the Jersey voters whose support he needs to win re-election in November.

He conditionally vetoed bills intended to overhaul the way the state issues firearms ID cards (S2723), and to require state law enforcement agencies to report lost, stolen and discarded guns to federal databases (A3797).

In his veto of the rifle bill, Christie said: “Tellingly, the Legislature points to no instance of this class of firearms being used by even a single criminal in New Jersey,” Christie wrote. “The wide scope of this total ban, therefore, will not further public safety, but only interfere with lawful recreational pastimes.”

At the time, Bryan Miller, executive director of Heeding God's Call, a faith-based organization focused on gun violence, called it the “most common-sensical bill in the entire package."

“One person with one of these guns and incendiary armor piercing bullets could knock down a chemical plant and kill hundreds of people," Miller said.